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Some new features in Cycles
Posted by Marius Oberholster on Tuesday, March 19, 2013 Under: General
Hey all!
Busy with some things on the book, but all the tutorials for it are done, so I don't really have much of an image to share today, so I thought I'd update you all on how Cycles is growing.
Cycles is the relatively new render engine native to Blender. It is by far more realistic than Blender Render, but also a bit more difficult to work with, especially for new users and those that avoided the Node Editor like the plague. In it's initial phases it was not only so unpractically slow that most wouldn't dare an animation with it, but it didn't even have proper particles, like in the old one. While it had the same physics systems, it did not have the same amount of features to affect those particles. So a huge thank you to all in the Blender Community that work so hard to develop and test Blender to it's max! You all rock!
Now, a few additions have been made since that time:
- Textures can now affect particles with Influence values like in the old render engine
- Particle properties can now affect textures on the particles thanx to the Particle Info Node.
- Cycles can now produce strands as well as the flat faced strands we know from Blender Render
- Cycles also has the ability now to affect the physical character of a mesh according to textures. While this was in the earlier releases, it was hidden and few know where to find it.
Blender itself also got a few new ones:
- Dynamic Topology (it's a form of sculpting that only adds physical detail where you want it, instead of subdividing the whole mesh. It is now much more memory and render time friendly.)
- Physics are now integrated so you don't have to use the game engine to record them first. I haven't played with it yet, but from my understanding, you can now animate your scene and the physics will work with your already made objects, if set to. Previously, in the game engine, you had nothing unless you knew how to animate and work for a game.
Some really great stuff and I encourage you to check it out! And here is a good place to start.
Also, there should be a new competition announced on Blender Guru sometime this week, so keep your eyes on that and register for the newsletter.
Tip for today: Don't underestimate a simple procedural texture. It's often much more useful than you might imagine.
Have a great one!!
Thank YOU!!!!!!!
Busy with some things on the book, but all the tutorials for it are done, so I don't really have much of an image to share today, so I thought I'd update you all on how Cycles is growing.
Cycles is the relatively new render engine native to Blender. It is by far more realistic than Blender Render, but also a bit more difficult to work with, especially for new users and those that avoided the Node Editor like the plague. In it's initial phases it was not only so unpractically slow that most wouldn't dare an animation with it, but it didn't even have proper particles, like in the old one. While it had the same physics systems, it did not have the same amount of features to affect those particles. So a huge thank you to all in the Blender Community that work so hard to develop and test Blender to it's max! You all rock!
Now, a few additions have been made since that time:
- Textures can now affect particles with Influence values like in the old render engine
- Particle properties can now affect textures on the particles thanx to the Particle Info Node.
- Cycles can now produce strands as well as the flat faced strands we know from Blender Render
- Cycles also has the ability now to affect the physical character of a mesh according to textures. While this was in the earlier releases, it was hidden and few know where to find it.
Blender itself also got a few new ones:
- Dynamic Topology (it's a form of sculpting that only adds physical detail where you want it, instead of subdividing the whole mesh. It is now much more memory and render time friendly.)
- Physics are now integrated so you don't have to use the game engine to record them first. I haven't played with it yet, but from my understanding, you can now animate your scene and the physics will work with your already made objects, if set to. Previously, in the game engine, you had nothing unless you knew how to animate and work for a game.
Some really great stuff and I encourage you to check it out! And here is a good place to start.
Also, there should be a new competition announced on Blender Guru sometime this week, so keep your eyes on that and register for the newsletter.
Tip for today: Don't underestimate a simple procedural texture. It's often much more useful than you might imagine.
Have a great one!!
Thank YOU!!!!!!!
In : General
Tags: general info progress stuff jipee
